Live Album Update and Recording With Appalatin!

Exciting things are happening right now! I feel ridiculously fortunate to be involved in a bunch of great projects. I’m super psyched to let you all know that with the very welcome help of my dear friends Brandon Coleman, Diego Lyra and Lourenço Vasconcellos the mixing on the album was finished last Sunday night. Just in case anyone was wondering, Lourenço is a great ‘lead’ backup singer!

The next step is to start working on some album artwork and get a very limited number CD’s manufactured. (Sidenote: If you’d rather have a physical copy of the album, sign up in the box down below and I’ll put you on a ‘reserve list’ to make sure you get a copy. I’ll be selling them for $10, but put your email in the box below to make sure you get a copy.)

I’m also throwing around ideas for a release show. At the moment, I’m thinking about a mid to late January release, possibly around Australia Day weekend. I’m still thinking about possible venues and support acts. If you’ve got any ideas about either of those things, send me an email or hit me up through the “Contact” tab on this site!

In the more immediate future though, I’m very excited to be recording with Louisville ‘supergroup’ Appalatin. For those of you who haven’t heard of them, they are an incredibly interesting group of people and a bunch of fun to hang around. I’m really excited to be working with them.

Applatin is a veritable institution. They’ve been around as a group for 6 years and play everything from straight up bluegrass to traditional Ecuadorian music to gypsy songs. It’s pretty eclectic and always incredibly rewarding to play with them on their second studio album. As I’m writing this, we’re on the way to Lexington, KY to work with superstar producer, Duane Lundy of Ben Sollee, These United States and Vandeveer credentials.

The five long-term members of Appalatin are (in alphabetical order) Fernando Moya from Ecuador, (Charango, guitar and a bunch of homemade flutes…very cool!) Luis De Leon from Mexico, (harmonica and percussion) Marlon Obando from Nicaragua, (vocals and guitar) Steve Sizemore from Hazard, KY (Yes…as in the Dukes of Hazzard. Steve plays percussion) and Yani Vozos, the other Kentucky native (vocals, guitar, percussion and chimes…He loves those chimes!

Everyone in the group speaks fluent Spanish, or ‘band Spanish’ as Steve calls it. The ‘band Spanish’ learning curve has been a little bit tough, but I’m picking up as much as I can as quickly as I can. It would be easier if it were Portuguese, which I’ve learnt a little bit from my Brazilian friends, but even then, I would only be able to say mostly useless things like, “I didn’t know she was married” and other, far less appropriate things.

I’ll be taking some photos from our time at Shangri-La Studios, and I’ll be putting them up here for anyone who is interested. Also, Appalatin will be playing on the Woodsongs radio station on Monday. The show that we are playing on has a worldwide audience of around 1.3 million people, so that will be a rush for sure! They’ll be filming it as well, so whenever I have the link to the video, I’ll put it up here! It’s also pretty sweet because it will be broadcast in Rockhampton, Queensland, where I lived for a good chunk of time.

Watch this space for everything I’ve mentioned in this post and remember, if you’d like me to reserve you a physical copy of my CD (I’ll be selling them for $10) put your email in the fancy email box at the bottom of this post!

Thanks so much for reading! I really appreciate you, the people who read all the way to the bottom of these posts!